2011-01-09

原住民不禮節民國100年 Taiwan's First Inhabitants do not welcome Taiwan's 100th anniversary

Taiwan's first peoples have a different view of Taiwan's history. They do not view the celebration of 100 years of the Republic of China, the official name of Taiwan, as a positive event. Dispossessed of their land rights, they view very much themselves as being in a similar position with other first nations and ethnic minorities whose presence is only tolerated in gaudy costumes at official events such as China's National congress where suddenly the 8% ethnic minorities are given prominence on CCTV. Not entirely different from the treatment given to First Nations in America.
To mark the Republic of China's foundation in 1911 by Sun Yat-sen 孫中山，otherwise referred to, as in Taiwan, as the father of the nation, Taiwan's Aborigines held a demonstration staged a demonstration in front of the Presidential Office on January 1, 2011, in which they accused the ROC government of repression and exploitation of the nation’s Aborigines.

President Ma's recent call for democracy in China would carry more weight if he had cleaned up his own house. He could have called for an official reparation. He could have taken a leaf from well know Australian's Foreign Affairs Minister, former PM and fluent Mandarin Speaker, Kevin Rudd who knelt in front of Australia's Aborigines and offered apologies for Australia's past treatment of its first inhabitants.
All the Taiwanese already received apologies from their own government in 1995 when then President Lee Teng-hui apologized for the crimes and murders committed by the Kuomintang-led government during the Martial Law era also know as the White Terror.
An apology and redress to Taiwan's First Peoples would have to include the Japanese who still claim that the "souls" of the Taiwanese whos erved during WWII are in the Shinto shrines in Japan and have refused the Aborigines release. There has never been an admission to the same scale of the destruction of the Taiwanese Aborigines 原住民 or a Commission of investigation similar to the one that produced the February 28 Incident Research Report and a government Fondation to help the victims and their relatives

True, Aborigines in Taiwan have their own television channel and some tv programmes 爸媽冏很大 have broadcast programmes on mainstream television to debate the problems of marriages and young couples between aborigines and Han Chinese. On this type of programme, non aborigines Taiwanese are free to express their prejudices which are then deconstructed, amicably by firmly, by mixed couples. (sorry, no subtitles).

Apparently, this type of public debate only addresses aborigines issues at a superficial level; especially since some older participants in the talk show identified aborigines by how much they drank and by the ideas they had that aborigines women are loose women. Cliches which correspond somehow to the idea that Canadians have of their own First Nations: drinkers and cigarettes smugglers.

At least the Taiwanese police did not come shooting at the protesters, the greatest part of them Atayal 泰雅族, mainly who came and held archery demonstrations. Hopefully, some of the tourists who saw the protest were from the mainland, maybe from the Lhassa police force. They could have learned a thing or two about peaceful demonstrations.